


The Chantry Monsters' Hunt

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders heals Hawke, Brutal Rape, Gang Rape, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Public Humiliation, Rape Recovery, Templars suck, Trauma Aftercare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-10 01:32:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7825018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of the Templars who work at the Chantry lead a double life of raping mage women in the night. One night they capture Hawke, drug her with magebane, brutally assault her to within an inch of her life, and leave her broken and humiliated on the doorstep of Anders' clinic.<br/>Anders doesn't like that too much, and soon the Chantry will go boom. He is perfectly tender and soothing towards Hawke as she heals from this hideous trauma, and helps her find empowerment again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As per the usual warning, I write very dark stories as an outlet for my stress as a trauma counselor. If you don't like violent stories, this won't be your cup of tea. I do not "enjoy" this stuff, and Hawke has my deepest sympathies.
> 
> Chapter 2 will be Anders' reaction, outrage, and caregiving. I would love specific input/requests on that part, in the comment section.

Hawke walked exhausted through the streets of Darktown, having just finished a dangerous job. She was close to Anders' clinic, but he had matters of his own to attend to--something about gathering dragon rocks and crystals for some kind of secret potion-mixing. No matter. He would be back by later the next morning. Hawke was too tired to wait up that long, but she decided to save herself the long walk home by letting herself into Anders' clinic so she could bathe and sleep there. He would be happy to see her, and perhaps they could take tomorrow off in order to relax together. Maker knew they both needed it.

The Darktown streets were empty. Even thieves and hookers had wrapped up their business for the night, and Hawke saw no others save for the occasional cockroach or rat that scurried by. No matter. Her strength was drained, and the last thing she needed was a confrontation.

Suddenly, a meaty hand covered her mouth, while the other hand wrapped around her throat. She tried to scream and kick, but her captor only squeezed her throat harder. She thrashed angrily, trying to cast a spell, but her staff was knocked to the ground.  
"Give her the magebane," said a gruff voice. Another set of hands thrust a cloth in front of Hawke's face, right over her nose and mouth, soaked with an acidic chemical. She recognized it as magebane, and felt her powers drain instantly.  
She tried to scream. But her voice was gone. The hands released her, and she slumped like a rag doll to the dirty ground, suddenly not able to move. Her limbs felt floppy and useless, like rubber. She fought the urge to break down in terror--she could not let them see her weakness.  
Her assailants walked in front of her and surrounded her. There were four of them--all wearing Chantry robes, adorned with the symbols of the highest levels of Templar power.

"Let's get her out of the open," the first one said. "No one's here now, but anyone could walk by."  
The others nodded. They grabbed Hawke by the boots and began to drag her roughly across the ground, over to a shadow created by some knocked-over garbage bins in an alleyway.

Hawke felt numb and cold, and her heart pounded so fast she thought she might pass out. A whimper escaped her when the first Templar yanked off both her boots in one fluid motion. He went to work on her robes, but his mate stopped him.  
"Don't just take them off like that," he said. He handed his friend a small dagger that made Hawke's head feel dizzy. "Cut them off, so she can't get dressed again afterwards."  
"Does it matter?" asked the first Templar as he began to slice off Hawke's clothes. His dagger was rusty, and it made rough slashes against her skin, but he didn't seem to care. "We're going to kill her after this, right?"  
"Nah. We'll just make her wish she was dead, but the last thing we need is to have the authorities on the hunt for another Darktown killer."  
"Who cares?" says the first. "They'll think it's that psycho--what's his name--the one who puts bodies together?" He peeled away Hawke's shredded outer clothing--now just useless strips of bloodied cloth--and used it to stuff her mouth closed, leaving her gagged and only in smallclothes. 

Hawke kept trying to fight, but her limbs were still useless. Freezing air pierced her skin, and as she stared at the blood running down from her arms and legs, she found herself thinking of home. Of her mother. Of Bethany. Perhaps if they killed her, she would see them again at last.  
"We can't be stupid about this," said the other Templar. "We don't want our little habit of mage-hunting to be ruined by taking it too far."  
So they did this often, then. A lump of terror and dread stuck in Hawke's throat. The Templars made a habit of this--of stalking mage women in the night, and raping them, and leaving them for dead. Not just any Templars, but Templars of the Chantry. Templars who were supposed to be holy men.

Then they cut her smallclothes off, and made her wish she was dead.

Hawke squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the horror and the degradation and the excruciating, mind-blowing pain. They all took turns. Several turns each, at least. They hauled her roughly from man to man, they flipped her over on both her front and her back, they slammed her head into the concrete so hard she thought her skull would crack open. Each hellish moment blended together like an eternity. It could have been hours, or days, or a sentence to hell. The only way Hawke had to tell time was by the sky above.

When the first hints of pink sunrise broke through the sky, the Templars pulled on their Chantry robes and stepped away from Hawke's limp body.  
"Let's get back to the Chantry," says the leader. "Before anyone sees us with her."  
"And now what?" The fourth Templar had been the least aggressive of all of them, and sounded the most uncertain. Perhaps he was new to this rite. "Do we just leave her here?"  
"Yes," said the first man. "She'll drag her way home, or maybe she won't. Either way, it doesn't matter. Mage women are lesser creatures, and the Maker gave us dominion to use them however we feel like. We don't need more mages in the world."

They left her there, alone and naked and barely conscious, surrounded by her shredded clothing and her broken, shattered staff. The magebane was working its way out of her system, and she was able to move her arms. She reached out with a shaking arm for the remnants of her clothing, but each piece was just a tiny, blood-stained scrap that fell through her fingers like wet leaves. She reached for her staff next, but it was cold and dead. No more magic would flow through it ever again.

Hawke fought back a sniffle, unable to stop the tears from coursing down her face. People wouldn't walk the streets for hours, and she was hidden by the heaps of trash. Perhaps no one would find her, and she truly would die here.

No. That could not happen. She deserved to die a hero's death, full of dignity and glory and meaning. But first, she deserved to life her life.

She thought of Anders, and how close she was to his clinic, as the rest of the magebane gradually wore off. She pushed herself to a sitting position. The attack had rendered her too weak to walk, but she could drag herself across the ground like a crippled drunk. Every movement brought her pain.

Finally, she made it to Anders'. The darkness inside the clinic revealed he wasn't home, because he always kept the small window light on, even when he slept. Hawke reached for the door handle, out of habit, but realized in horror that it was locked. She kept her key inside the pocket of her robes, and her robes were a heap of bloodied ruins in the alley now. She hadn't even thought about searching for the key, and there was no way she could go back. Dragging herself to the door had taken the last of her strength.

She curled into a ball and hugged herself, praying Anders would come home before anyone else saw her. But people did see her. People passed by the streets and stared. She heard the whispers about her. Some of them stopped to grope her, thinking she was a drugged and passed-out whore who had fallen drunk in the street. She hugged herself more tightly, trying not to sob. She had never felt so helpless and humiliated in her life, and as daylight continued to rise, she got a better look at how awful her condition was.

The Templars had left cuts all over her body from where they had cut her robes away, and the attack had left her covered in swollen, purple bruises. The hours of violent penetration had left her insides rubbed raw, and thick blood oozed from between her legs. They had used her blood to draw the symbol of the Chantry sun across her breasts, as though they were marking their territory, and the words "filthy mage whore" had been scrawled in blood across her stomach. Hawke didn't even want to think about what her face must have looked like. She knew her head was bruised and swollen--perhaps she had a concussion--and at least one of her eyes was swollen shut.

She slipped in and out of consciousness, trying to convince herself that this was just a nightmare. That none of it was real. The occasional passerby jeered at her before hurrying quickly away, and it made her feel lower than the flies that buzzed in the gutters. She wondered why nobody had compassion. Why nobody came to help her. And then blackness washed over her.

She woke up to the sensation of being scooped into Anders' arms.


	2. Chapter 2

Hawke let herself slump into Anders' arms, as though she could melt into him and find safety there. His arms felt warm and tight as he cradled her close to his chest and kicked open the door of the clinic. Hawke could feel his familiar blue-tinged glow and the surge of electrical warmth that flared up with it.

"I'll kill him." His voice was low and furious as he set her onto the bed. Despite the deadly, quiet rage in his voice, he was nothing but tender as he set Hawke gently down on the most comfortable bed in the room. "My love, my darling, tell me who did this to you and I swear to the Maker himself that I will hunt him down and tear him limb from limb."

A new wave of humiliation washed over Hawke. She wanted to crawl inside of him, to hide underneath his shirt where she could listen to his heartbeat forever, and never have to step back out into the world where the Chantry monsters roamed. But she couldn't, and she also couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. So she crawled under the thin blanket instead, and wrapped it around herself as she rolled over to hide her tears.

Anders climbed onto the bed and laid down next to her, wrapping an arm around her waist. "I love you." He kissed her bruised forehead and her swollen eyelid and the place where a deep cut had slashed across the middle of her nose. "I love you, and you don't have to feel ashamed of anything. You didn't do anything wrong. Whoever did this to you, he's the only one who should be ashamed--and I'm going to kill him."

Anders' hand stroked gently through Hawke's hair, and she reached up to grab it. She traced his fingers with his own, savoring the relief that she was safe with a person who loved her, that she was inside in a warm bed, that the hell that had ripped her world open had finally ended at last.

"Not just one," she murmured. Her voice came out weak and raspy, and she flinched under the covers at how awful--how pathetic and weak and utterly unlike herself--she sounded. 

Anders wrapped both arms fiercely around her and held her close, so that her chin was tucked into his shoulder. It was a primal embrace, mixed with protective instinct and horror at what she had endured. The blue glow bolted through him again, and stronger.

A minute passed before Anders spoke. "More than one? My poor love. I'm so sorry." He kissed her hair again. "Who did this to you? I will kill them. I will kill them ALL."

"Templars." Just saying the word made her voice crack, and soon the tears were coursing down Hawke's face. "A bunch of Templar men with robes of the Chantry. Four of them. And they made me--they made me--" she tried to recall all the degradations that they had inflicted on her, but the acts were so unspeakable that all she could do was let the sobs flow through her.

"I should have known." Anders held her close once more, then stood up. He was shaking, and the blue glow flickered on and off around his face. "My love, please, don't be ashamed. You're the bravest, strongest person I know, and you deserve for these miscreants to be slaughtered one by one. You deserve the most powerful staff in Thedas, made of their blood. You deserve to rule, to crush them under their feet. I might not be able to give you all that you deserve, but I will deliver the first. I will slaughter them for you--I swear it to the Maker himself."

Hawke shivered and watched him as his voice changed and he shook with the blue volts that lit through him. Then the grip on Anders faded, and he became his ordinary self again.

"I'm sorry." He walked back up to Hawke and took both her hands in his. "Not for what I said--I will slaughter them for you, my love--but I should have focused on caring for you first. Come on, let's get you cleaned up and healed."

Hawke leaned forward, slumping eagerly into his soothing embrace. He picked her up, still wrapped in the blanket she had cocooned herself in, and carried her gently to a washtub that he filled with hot water.

"I love you," he whispered as he kissed different parts of her face and healed her bloodshot eyes and her concussion and the deep gash on her nose. "You're so, so beautiful, Hawke. I don't care about how rough you look or how many scars you have. I love you because you're my soul mate, and my hero." 

Hawke closed her eyes and let herself soak up the words as if they were healing balm, like the cream that Anders was dabbing into her cuts. He had moved the blanket to tend to all her other wounds, but he still kept her covered as much as he could, not wanting her to feel too exposed. She let herself rest against the edge of the tub until he finished healing her and lifted her into the water.

"You'll always have a scar here," Anders admitted, touching her nose gently. "It cuts across your face. But it makes you look stronger--fearsome."

She nodded, still feeling numb. The hot water around her almost burned, but it felt wonderful being clean again. It felt safe, as though she was herself again, and the pain of the water in her wounds took away from the gnawing hollow agony inside her chest.

But the feeling wouldn't stay gone for long. What if she could never go back to the version of herself who Anders and her friends loved? She tried to imagine herself sarcastically taunting a group of would-be attackers while twirling her staff in the air, the way she had done with some bandits at Sundermount just a few days go. It seemed almost unfathomable. Now, if bandits approached her, she would probably freeze in terror and grovel at their feet. How would her friends see her as anything but a broken failure?

Anders dipped his hand across the water and began to gently wash her with the cloth. "I love you," he whispered.

She wordlessly leaned forward and let him care for her. She felt shattered and rotten, and certain that no one could love her for long, not when they saw what kind of creature the attack had turned her into. But if he wanted to love her for now, before he realized the truth, she couldn't resist letting him. She couldn't resist soaking up whatever last drops of love she could get, like a dying plant in the desert quenched for the final drops of rain.

#

Hawke spent the next week in bed. She wore a tunic of Anders' that was baggy on her and went down to her knees, and when she woke up with nightmares it stuck to her with sweat. She dragged herself up out of bed only in the moments where she had to, and she could barely even eat except for when Anders spoon-fed her her favorite soup. She could tell she was becoming thinner, weaker. She could tell by the way the tunic grew bigger on her each day, and by the way she could feel her ribs when she rocked herself to sleep.

Her friends all came to see her. Merrill brought her herbal teas and scarves from the market, and sat perched awkwardly at the edge of her bed, too unsure of what to say to say anything at all. Isabela played cards with her, and when Hawke was too letharic to take her own turns, Isabela played Hawke's cards for her, not even bothering to hide the cheats she made.

"It's okay, Hawke," Isabela told her. "It's all right if you don't want to open up, yet. We'll be here for you anyway. We still love you."

Fenris brooded angrily and didn't say much, but he never said another word about mages or magic. Any time someone said the word "templar," the familiar anger seeped back into his expression. Hawke wondered whether he had changed--whether this incident decided to make him switch sides.

No matter how they showed all their mixed feelings, Hawke's friends showed her they loved her. She wished she could let her spirit accept their love.

#

In the following days, Hawke ventured out of her bed. Merrill went to the Hawke mansion and brought her back her own clothes, and she practiced casting spells with the replacement staff Anders had gotten her. When she successfully launched her first fireball with the new staff--into the fireplace--they all celebrated together by roasting marshmallows over it.

"You know we always love you," said Isabela, perhaps for the millionth time. "It's okay if it takes a while for you to get your strength back."

Hawke nodded, and leaned gratefully into the embrace of her friends. A spark of hope warmed within her, just like the crackling fire. She wanted to believe them. She wanted to accept their love, even if it was hard, even if she couldn't help doubting them or herself at times. She could have her doubts but accept love anyway--both the others' love for her, and her own love for herself.

#

That night, she and Anders made love again for the first time since it happened. She had been the one to initiate it. He had been unsure at first, concerned for her safety and for whether or not the act would re-open all her wounds. But when she undressed and embraced him and rode him long into the night, he told her she was beautiful and licked her to ecstacy until all the doubt of his desire for her was blissfully erased from her mind. When she cried, he held her and rocked her to sleep. When she awoke in the morning, her limbs entwined with his, she felt safe. And she realized that lovemaking would not always have to mean pain.

#

And then the Chantry exploded. Hawke had known Anders was plotting his revenge--she had seen it in his perpetual exhaustion and hidden anger and the way he plotted secretly in the night. But she hadn't realized it would be like this. She hadn't realized that justice would mean putting his life--the life of the only person who knew her to the deepest parts of her soul--in danger, would put her at risk of losing everything.

And then they went on the run. The security they had, the fabric of the life she had known, had once again been ripped apart.

But Hawke could handle it. If there was one thing Hawke knew with certainty about herself, it was that she knew how to handle feeling shattered.


End file.
